Can you believe they've come this far by now? Once known as OpenBeOS, Haiku today announced the release of the fourth alpha for Haiku R1. It seems like only yesterday when BeOS died and OpenBeOS rose form its ashes, generating a new hope among the legions of avid BeOS fans. Now, almost twelve years later, we've hit the fourth alpha.

It's desktop oriented in the sense that its very small dev team targets ~desktops almost exclusively (and it always targeted them, also as BeOS - its web appliances didn't go far, and were almost desktops anyway).

As I implied earlier, it would have to be done by a dedicated team. I actually think that Be was on the right path with the focus shift, although they were much too early.

And in the sense that it's otherwise relatively unremarkable - what it would offer for mobile, that would make a tangible difference?

Not much really. Except for the fact that it's already a clean and lean little OS that is well suited for the task. Much more so than Linux in my opinion.
But other than that the question would really be "how can we make this different?". I think that there's plenty of room for innovation in that market if you are up to it.

That said, I'm not arguing that it's something that must be done. Just saying if anyone had the desire to make it big, that would pretty much be the only and last chance.

it's already a clean and lean little OS that is well suited for the task. Much more so than Linux in my opinion.

I don't know ...a variant of Linux is ready - it's actually shipping, and clearly good enough to be massively popular. I'd say that's being far better suited for the task than any hypothetical Haiku offshot. :p

But other than that the question would really be "how can we make this different?". I think that there's plenty of room for innovation in that market if you are up to it.

I think that question isn't ultimately that important, WRT market forces (yes, we can say "unfortunately isn't that important" - but we, those who even know about BeOS or Haiku, hardly matter here). If even Microsoft being the "3rd ecosystem" is not certain, there's much less hope for any smaller players...

I suspect the innovation might happen, from now on, mostly within the established ecosystems - roughly like it was with the PC: look what immense improvements were brought by its economies of scale, in the last 3 decades (meanwhile, all the more ~proprietary or niche platforms died out - even Macs are just PCs underneath, really).
BTW, overlooking that was a major error of Be, with how they self-exiled themselves into ~premium markets (and so x86 port of BeOS came too late, when win95 & 98 already took over)

I don't know ...a variant of Linux is ready - it's actually shipping, and clearly good enough to be massively popular. I'd say that's being far better suited for the task than any hypothetical Haiku offshot. :p

My point was that you need a pretty powerful device to get a decent Android experience.
I don't know how much linux is to blame for that from a technical standpoint, perhaps not as much. It could just as well be cultural thing. The end result is the same none the less.

If even Microsoft being the "3rd ecosystem" is not certain, there's much less hope for any smaller players...

I depends a lot on if it gets a powerful hardware manufacturer to stand behind it. That was the only thing that made Android a success. What would it be without Samsung?

No-one has the same kind of grip that MS had on the desktop. At least not yet. The situation is very different from that standpoint.
The fact that pretty much no one has a relationship to BeOS is just an advantage in my opinion really.

If I was to choose a foundation for a mobile OS today I think Haiku would be among my first choices. In fact, that was my first thought when I saw the iPhone for the first time. "Hey, Haiku would be perfect for that thing"

Again, I'm not saying that it would be an easy task, and I'm not saying that its even needed. But the chance of ever gaining a user share other than old BeOS nostalgics on the desktop is non existent. If someone would want it to become used by people it would have to be on mobile devices, televisions and such.